Koen
Koen (full avatar name: Vortex Koenkamp) is the neko son of Dr. Darien Mason and Sumalee (also called Lucian), the servant of Darien's maniacal father, Dr. Jeremiah Mason. He was often seen in Steelhead around the Bloodwing Foundation, but also prowled around Caledon, especially Kittiwickshire. Koen was in fact much older than his teenage appearance conveyed. His immortal spirit (he uses the Ancient Egyptian term, the "ka")is thousands of years old, the product of a union between the demon Bloodwing and Sekhmet, an wrathful Egyptian cat-goddess. Koen was the reincarnation of Vortex in the Steam Age. Koen was born in the streets of New Babbage, and his mother quickly taught him how to survive in the urban jungle. She also taught him what secrets she still remembered of the http://www.caledonwiki.com/index.php?title=Bloodtail_neko Bloodtail tribe, including the fall of the first House Bloodwing, but refused to speak of how and why they came to New Babbage, and never mentioned any of her history involving the Mason family during his childhood. When Sumalee saw a poster recruiting for textile workers at a factory in Caledon, she brought her son with her on a passenger ship. A freak storm struck the boat, and before the boat capsized, Sumalee told Koen to seek out Bloodwing. Koen woke up the next day washed up on the shores of Caledon. There was no sign of Sumalee, and in his despair he suffered a total mental collapse, and the Vortex personality emerged from behind the fallen mask that was Koen. Vortex then remembered why he was reincarnated into Bloodwing's family line: he was sent by Sekhmet to harass Bloodwing into paying eons of lapsed child support payments. Vortex then journeyed to Steelhead to harass Bloodwing for beng a "deadbeat dad." When Bloodwing's spirit was torn free of Darien Mason, Vortex saw Darien and suddenly remembered his mortal identity, and turned back into Koen. Koen blamed Dr. Mason for the assasination attempt and exile of his mother and mauled him. Darien, summoned Bloodwing to save him. Bloodwing captured Koen, aided Dr. Mason and stranded Koen in a dystopian city of the Dark Future. Left to fend for himself in a Dystopian city, Koen joined up with a resident pack of nekos to destroy an infestation of giant mutant scorpions. As a token of gratitude, he was given a pair of spiked bracers that became his primary weapons. These bracers later vanished due to a later temporal anomaly. After Dr. Mason fully regenerated his body, Qli-1 retreived Koen. With all previous misconceptions dispelled, Dr. Mason forgave Koen and accepted him as his son. Darien immediately set him to work in the lab, and made a project of turning the feral neko into a "proper Victorian Gentleman." Koen was a difficult student, and would often visit Caledon when he should have been studying or doing chores. Wandering into Kittiwickshire, he found the Kittiswitch garden and met Kiralette Kelley. They soon discovered they shared similar paths in life: they were both feral nekos trying to adapt to the demands of new families and the Victorian culture from which they were resisting pressure to conform. They became best friends. Only at the moment of his death on New Erebus did he realize that Kira was the incarnation of Vortex's eternal beloved, K'rra daughter of Bast. While Koen was not a Spark, his father realized he had powerful latent magical abilities. Dr. Mason assigned him studies in Alchemy. Koen appears to have learned some magic from his mother as well. Koen later undertook an expedition to the rainforests of Sumatra on the hunch that his mother may have returned to her tribal home. While his encounters with dinosaurs, giant insects, and hostile neko tribes honed his survival and combat skills. He found no evidence of surviving Bloodtails, but he did find the ruins of the first House Bloodwing. He learned the history of the first House fromthe heiroglyphics and also "remembered" some glimpses of past lives. He later used these secrets to solve the riddle of the Hydra (explanation to be added in Bloodwing Dragonash's entry) and rescue his Aunt Lumina. Koen and Qlippothic would later investigate the ruins of the site of Jeremiah Mason's Baltimore plantation, where he recovered a magical ankh left by Sumalee, who had escaped just before Darien's children arrived. Koen would later use the ankh to fight an undead ancestor who was menacing Winterfell, Aleister Mason. Tragedy struck when Koen was sent to dispatch Aleister. In a Phyrric victory, Koen defeated the vampire but was himself Embraced. He never attacked another humanoid in this state except to charge Kiralette, who staked him with a crossbow bolt so he could be shipped in coffin back to Steelhead to be cured. Darien began a transfusion therapy, replacing Koen's vitae with his own blood, which was already infused with an antidote for vampirism from a previous adventure. Still confined to the Foundation basement and extermely bored, he followed a construction droid through a secret entrance and found the Foundation's ultimate secret: the Retroactive Continuity Device. Koen tried to use the device to undo the events that lead to his Embrace. He did cure himself, but it shunted him to the Void, where Dr. Jeremiah Mason captured him. Jeremiah killed Koen while harnessing the Vortex as a power source for his city-ship, New Erebus. Koen would reincarnate less than a year later. Koen returned to assist Sheriff Fuzzball Ortega in apprehending Jobias Barthelmess. Later, on a mission to stop Darien's brother Marcus Mason both he and Gematria were killed. Koen again reincarnated. His current incarnation no longer carries the ka of the Vortex, but does possess neko hand-claws. Even without his Vortex abilities, he still retains his combat and alchemy skills learned in his last incarnations. Having worked with time travel technology before, he was accepted as a companion by the Time Lord Purdie Uggleh. He is currently helping the Time Lord rescue Hotspur Otoole from the Dark Ocean Society in the province of Fusang. Koen now maintains a public journal, The Last Bloodtail Category: People